What If
by Sally Mn
Summary: A rewrite of the 'it was all a dream' cliche...


**What if...?**

He was alone - and not alone - in a room drenched with blood-red light, standing over the dead man he had followed for... too long, simply far too long... and staring down into a scarred, empty, dark golden gaze. Lifting his head, he watched the circle of black-clad, faceless ghouls close in.

He was finally going to die.

He lifted the gun...

**~oOo~**

And was woken by a poke in the side from the next bunk.

"Avon," the voice was soft and cautious and deeply, deeply annoying, "are you still asleep?"

Avon sighed, but bit down the retort that would have been wasted on his new... 'friend'. "Surprisingly, no. What do you want, Vila?"

The holding cell was quieter now - just a few snores and grunts from the sleeping, and tearful mumbling from the corner where the boy Nova was - and the lights had dimmed, but was still cold and smelled of sweat, cheap wallpaint, unwashed nylex clothing and fear.

Ending up here had never counted in the plans... and he was beginning to think that even Cygnus Alpha would be better than this, _had_ to be better than this.

He turned on his side, trying to bring his mind back from _that_ place the dream had led him to. Gauda Prime... but nothing like the real place, the bland Gamma holiday world, thank god. Where his subconscious had dragged up the nightmare - well, _all_ of the nightmare - he didn't know, and didn't care to.

"They're bringing in a new one," Vila said softly.

"Really." He couldn't garner much interest.

Vila was sitting on the end of his bunk, idly watching a viscreen in the corner that droned out a cheap Delta-grade space opera, designed, Avon suspected, to completely numb the brains of its already drugged audience. On the screen, two Star Pilots - both blue-eyed, one blonde and female, the other curly-haired, chipmunk-cheeked and male - were pretending, very badly, to act, _and_ were being upstaged by the distracting red leather suit the male was wearing.

"Someone important," Tynus mumbled from the bunk on the other side, "by what the guards said."

"Really." He also didn't want to encourage them: Vila had latched on to the two of them the minute they were brought into the cell and while Avon found him as much an amusement as an irritation, listening to the pair of them complain for hours was more punishment than he thought justified for a far worse crime than embezzlement. Or even murder.

"Anna and Del -" Tynus went on, "left an hour ago."

Anna... he caught a breath, a flash of dream-enhanced beauty, pale eyes, pale hair, pale skin wrapped in grey. But Anna had _never_ been beautiful - she looked far to much like her brother in lipstick and frills.

"They're for the prison on Saurian Major, she said. Face it, Kerr, we fucked up letting them in -"

"Agreed," Avon bared his teeth in what he knew was completely unlike a smile. "And as I recall, Tynus, it was your idea to do so."

"Yes, well..."

"Tynus," the non-smile got wider, "shut up. And Vila," a hand went out towards the thief, "my watch. Again."

Vila sighed, as if maligned and persecuted, and handed it over. "About the new one," he went on in a mumble, one eye on the massive Neatheandal with the limiter in the bunk across from him, "they say it's a rebel. Some political prisoner, ran a group of dissenters for years."

Avon felt, and ignored, the prickle of deja vu; he didn't believe in such things. The dream had been just that, a dream, a mish-mash of bits and pieces from newscasts, bad vis-serials and ebooks and his own rather poor imagination.

What little fragments he could recall made no sense. A rebel leader, an alien spaceship (culled, no doubt, from Anna's cheap romantic ebooks), a war, an invasion... by what looked like green plastic bodybags... large, warm hazel eyes lit with laughter, purpose, fury, grief.

A long and grim and barely glimpsed road to tragedy.

Damn. Even Cygnus Alpha had to be better than what he could dream up, true?

He turned his back on Vila, and closed his eyes.

**~oOo~**

It was an hour, maybe more, before he gave up trying to sleep, before the lights came back on and the other prisoners stirred, groaning and muttering and grumbling. By then the dream had gone, frayed and faded back into the dark places it had come from.

Reality was what he had to deal with now, to find a way to manipulate and survive. He turned over, and stared into the eyes of someone new. Someone different. Someone unlike anyone he'd ever met before, but whom he felt he knew.

"Avon?" Vila, sitting up now, spoke with an undercurrent of excitement that Avon found... disconcerting. It had to be a new mark for his thieving hands, of course. Or... "This is the new prisoner."

Hazel-gold eyes he vaguely, hazily knew... in an oddly feline face, a werecat face wearing a smile, and surrounded by dark hair.

Very soft, very short dark hair.

The new prisoner held out a hand. "You may have heard of me."

"Servala-?" No. _No_.

Her smile was sweet, creamy... and to his eyes deadly. "My name is Blake."

**-the end-**


End file.
